Offtopic: Never understood the idea of taking Patented documents you do not own any rights to and putting your site watermark on them, as if that somehow either indemnifies you or authorizes you some right to republish the work and no one else?

I get the impression that the NFC in the patent is a generic term for communication over short distances using electric fields, not the thing that is branded as NFC, which is a specific application. The patent even mentions using capacitative effects for transmission. The thing branded as NFC is purely inductive. Also Apple is going all out on Bluetooth 4, part of which is Bluetooth Low Energy, which has a huge functional overlap with NFC, but is more modern and has native crypto.

The same would apply for NFC.
Bluetooth Low Energy is low energy. It was designed to last months on a small battery, (for simple things like identification, proximity detection, or temperature sensors), it will be always on.

I see. I assumed the whole point of applying NFC was to make things easier and smoother, an "it just works" kind of thing.

Or better yet, biometric authentication can be triggered as part of the NFC transaction. Just as it can be triggered by over the internet.
It's just an authentication factor like user ID and password. For example:

1. Push the power button to login using fingerprint authentication.
2. Wave phone in front of receiver to initiate NFC communication.
3. Use the in-display fingerprint reader to authenticate the NFC transaction.

I really wish Apple Insider would stop with the damn "FINGERPRINT SCANNER nonsense, so we won't have people thinking there's gonna be a frickin' fingerprint being recorded and bringing on ridiculous question like this last one. We can also avoid the dim-witted phone thieves escaping with a person's finger along with their phone!!!

It's only a biometric sensor, not a fingerprint scanner!!!

"That (the) world is moving so quickly that iOS is already amongst the older mobile operating systems in active development today." — The Verge

I see. I assumed the whole point of applying NFC was to make things easier and smoother, an "it just works" kind of thing.

Could work that way, but the carriers, being in denial of their true destiny as dumb pipes, saw NFC as a chance to escape.

They have kept NFC imprisoned in their jail of ridiculous fees and key escrow nastiness for a long time. Now NFC has peer-to-peer, enabling use of NFC without carrier interference. But, I think it's too late. NFC will have 2 or 3 death spasms that people will mistake for life and then die.

Two things, an NFC phone could be tracked at government checkpoints EVEN WITHOUT cellular or wifi or bluetooth on!

2nd, there is concern around the ways different hardware features can be turned on via software, remotely, without your approval, possibly via a gov't backdoor, vulnerability, etc. Without having a jailbroken device w/root access, you could never know for certain if these types of things were happening behind the scenes. How could you know if the FaceTime front camera was turned on w/out your permission, there is no LED to show it on, and even if there was, the LED could be commanded off while the camera was on. Same thing with a fingerprint sensor -- how do you know if it is not capturing yours w/out your authorization when you touch the home button?!! There are plenty of reasons for jailbreaking to continue.

Remember, when the people fear the government there is tyranny, and when the government fears the people there is liberty.

"Paranoia will destroy yaaaa...."

Why is it paranoia? Given all the NSA revelations we've heard of during the past few weeks, I have to admit that even I am feeling a tad nervous.

Tim Cook is gay, believes in climate change, and cares deeply about racial equality. Deal with it (and please spare us if you can't).

I get the impression that the NFC in the patent is a generic term for communication over short distances using electric fields, not the thing that is branded as NFC, which is a specific application. The patent even mentions using capacitative effects for transmission. The thing branded as NFC is purely inductive. Also Apple is going all out on Bluetooth 4, part of which is Bluetooth Low Energy, which has a huge functional overlap with NFC, but is more modern and has native crypto.

I've done demo software for NFC, NFC is a bag of hurt.
Remember that other bag of hurt?

Apple specifically limited this patent's application and the US one to near field communication, NFC, which is not the same as Bluetooth. Someone using Bluetooth LE to do the exact same thing would not be infringing as I read it. That doesn't mean that Apple hasn't also filed another patent application addressing it tho. This one wouldn't be it.

Why is it paranoia? Given all the NSA revelations we've heard of during the past few weeks, I have to admit that even I am feeling a tad nervous.

I'm with you. We're all being tracked, recorded and stored whether we use a desktop or mobile computing device, iOS, MAC, Android or Windows. . . and it ain't for serving up harmless ads. Most of us just had no idea to what extent until recently.

When you have FULL device access, your abilities are as great as you are knowledgable.

The root or mobile user passwords are easily changeable -- was that supposed to be an issue?! *baffled* Every "feature" comes with tradeoffs, and in the hands of the unscrupulous, there can be a world of undesired consequences. Technology lovers must remain eternally vigilant to watch over what is going on behind the scenes and spread information for awareness to others.

Analogies are out there, just watch the movie the Matrix…

Quote:

Originally Posted by dreyfus2

Well, jailbreaking does not really help you with that either, as you still can't look into things happening inside compiled code. And, outside of people really knowing what they are doing (<1% of users, I would say), jailbreaking is a pretty foolproof way to make a device more vulnerable (default root password, disabling sandboxing, full file system access, ability to install potentially rogue apps using private APIs).